Around 1990-91 when VGA became the mainstream. You can only fit so much data for specific color depths on a floppy...

leileilol wrote:

Around 1990-91 when VGA became the mainstream. You can only fit so much data for specific color depths on a floppy...

but most XT has double deck floppy drive though?
some XT also have stuff like 5/10 MB hdd ...

I remember playing some games with VGA/MCGA support on XT:
- Prince of Persia
- Golden Axe (almost unbearable)
- Sharkey Pool, the EGA mode works just fine on that 256KB Vga

Mobygames > Game Browser > DOS > Minimum CPU Class Required > 8088/8086 :

1988: 233 games
1989: 301 games
1990: 269 games
1991: 228 games
1992: 122 games
1993: 56 games

it was the MPC stuff that really killed it off. There were some efforts to maintain compatibility though... funnily enough Commander Keen 1-3 required EGA and a 286 (IIRC), but 4-6 were doable on an XT/CGA.

Joey_sw wrote:

Golden Axe (almost unbearable)

Ugh, don't remind me. 🤣 I once timed the dwarf's magic attack - 14 minutes..... and that was with CGA and turbo on!

VileRancour wrote:

Joey_sw wrote:

Golden Axe (almost unbearable)

Ugh, don't remind me. 🤣 I once timed the dwarf's magic attack - 14 minutes..... and that was with CGA and turbo on!

Was that on a Spectrum? 😉

VileRancour wrote:

Mobygames > Game Browser > DOS > Minimum CPU Class Required > 8088/8086 : […]
Show full quote

Mobygames > Game Browser > DOS > Minimum CPU Class Required > 8088/8086 :

1988: 233 games
1989: 301 games
1990: 269 games
1991: 228 games
1992: 122 games
1993: 56 games

it was the MPC stuff that really killed it off. There were some efforts to maintain compatibility though... funnily enough Commander Keen 1-3 required EGA and a 286 (IIRC), but 4-6 were doable on an XT/CGA.

Joey_sw wrote:

Golden Axe (almost unbearable)

Ugh, don't remind me. 🤣 I once timed the dwarf's magic attack - 14 minutes..... and that was with CGA and turbo on!

I always found that funny too about the Commander Keen games. When they made the first one they made such a big deal about finally being able to achieve smooth, console-style scrolling using EGA hardware, then they went and topped themselves later by doing the same on CGA. 🤣

About the dwarf's magic attack on Golden Axe, I knew that gamers back then had more patience for slower framerates, but I can't see how anyone could have ever had the patience to wait 14 minutes for an attack to complete in what is supposed to be a fairly fast-paced action game, even back then. Was it more bearable on a 286 at least, or did it need something even more advanced to really be playable?

For the Golden Axe, I remember playing it on my 286. It played comfortably well. With the Turbo button on, the speed showed 20Mhz on the LED. It had a VGA card, the SB 1.5, 40MB hard drive, and a combo floppy drive. I also played Wing Commander 1 and 2 extensively on this machine.

Sounds like a pretty sweet machine for playing early 90s stuff. 😁 The 386SX16 box I have sitting in storage is probably going to have similar specs once I get around to working on it. 🤣

You'd be surprised just how much better the 286 was compared to 8088/8086.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eesSmqsfXGU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBHxfsCqWw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZPX1jtk3-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4gBgUyVuY0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE403HAB-fk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzzkBvviBKg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraAawslLKs

AFAIK in 16-bit stuff the 286 had same speed as the 386 per clock, the downside being it was usually clocked much lower. When Bill Gates called the 286 a "brain dead chip" he was reffering to its idiotic protected mode memory management (which is why games until 386 mostly used only real mode) not its performance which was very decent for its age. The 286 is around 2x faster per clock compared to the 8086, so even a 8 Mhz XT is as slow as a downclocked 4 Mhz 286 would be.

I've actually heard that the 286 delivered better 16-bit perfomance than the 386SX. That makes me wonder, has anyone ever tried overclocking a 386SX? I imagine it would be simple in theory since most 386SX boards get their clock rate from an oscillator, which can be replaced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9CZQzpzYA0

Quite nice speed for a 10 Mhz 286.

m1so wrote:

The 286 is around 2x faster per clock compared to the 8086, so even a 8 Mhz XT is as slow as a downclocked 4 Mhz 286 would be.

A 8088 like in the original XT is still slower than a 8086. I don't know how much slower exactly, though.
A 2x speed difference between 8086 and 286 sounds about right, or did you want to write 8088?

I meant 8086. I know the 8088 is well, a total dog.

Is it just me, or is the DOS port of Golden Axe really poorly optimized? The other games seem to run fine on your rig, though now I can see why people on slower systems had to wait 14 minutes for a special attack to complete on it. 😜

For fun, just try it in dosbox - set machine=cga with something like 333 cycles (slightly faster than a Turbo XT clone according to Topbench), then fire up the game and see how "playable" it is.
Multiply that by 3 (1000 cycles = 286 territory), and the game's speed actually improves by much more than x3, making it fully playable in CGA mode. A little less so with VGA, but indeed it's apparent that Golden Axe is just very poorly optimized for slow machines.

Interestingly enough, the little system requirements sticker on the package says nothing about CPU requirements... way to give a crap, SEGA!

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Is it just me, or is the DOS port of Golden Axe really poorly optimized? The other games seem to run fine on your rig, though now I can see why people on slower systems had to wait 14 minutes for a special attack to complete on it. 😜

It is unfortunately not my rig 🙁 just one of the few 286 videos on Youtube. I can imagine that it run nicely on a 20 Mhz 286, seeing as this is a 10 Mhz one. Also, a guy here at the forums said that his PC/XT loaded on the "Choose your destiny" for 10 minutes. On the 10 Mhz 286 in the video it loads in about a minute. Playing a game at low frames per second is one thing, playing it at frames per minute is another...

m1so wrote:

On the 10 Mhz 286 in the video it loads in about a minute.

~30 seconds on my 10MHz, 286-based Tandy 1000 RLX.

Might be worth trying to emulate in PCem too, see if it happens there with specific 286 settings. 😜

Any idea if the said delay in Golden Axe on those 286s is affected by the system RAM, and if there is information regarding those 286's RAM?

I had 2MB in mine. (- with hardware expanded memory board - I remember this because I remember playing Wing Commander I with the message "Expanded Memory fully used..." at the command prompt while loading... (Or was that in Wing Commander 2?))

On the other hand, I don't think Golden Axe uses any extended/expanded memory.

And I can't remember if Golden Axe is playable with floppy disk alone, and if the floppy reading was a factor in those systems.

I am more intrigued by the fact that the game seems about 20x slower on 8 Mhz XTs than on a relatively modest 286.

333 cycles seems too slow for a Turbo XT, more like the original 4.77 Mhz XT. I find the MIPS utility more useful in measuring speed in Dosbox seeing as Topbench detected elianda's AMD K5 PR133 machine as a 1.2 Ghz "slocket" Celeron.

There also seems to be quite a big difference between 10 Mhz and 12 Mhz 286 according to Wikipedia, 1.5 MIPS vs 2.66 MIPS.

By the way, how do you select the character? I'm pressing every key...